Spiritual Formation

The Mark of the Christian (part 6)

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

by Francis Schaeffer

Love In Practice

Let me give two beautiful examples of such observable love. One happened among the Brethren groups in Germany immediately after the last war.

In order to control the church, Hitler commanded the union of all religious groups in Germany, drawing them together by law. The Brethren divided over this issue. Half accepted Hitler’s dictum and half refused. The ones who submitted, of course, had a much easier time, but gradually in this organizational oneness with the liberal groups their own doctrinal sharpness and spiritual life withered. On the other hand, the group that stayed out remained spiritually virile, but there was hardly a family in which someone did not die in a German concentration camp.

Now can you imagine the emotional tension? The war is over, and these Christian brothers face each other again. They had the same doctrine and they had worked together for more than a generation. Now what is going to happen? One man remembers that his father died in a concentration camp and knows that these people over here remained safe. But people on the other side have deep personal feelings as well.

Then gradually these brothers came to know that this situation just would not do. A time was appointed when the elders of the two groups could meet together in a certain quiet place. I asked the man who told me this, “What did you do?” And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what we did. We came together, and we set aside several days in which each man would search his own heart.” Here was a real difference; the emotions were deeply, deeply stirred. “My father has gone to the concentration camp; my mother was dragged away.” These things are not just little pebbles on the beach; they reach into the deep well-springs of human emotions. But these people understood the command of Christ at this place, and for several days every man did nothing except search his own heart concerning his own failures and the commands of Christ. Then they met together.

I asked the man, “What happened then?”

And he said, “We just were one.”

To my mind, this is exactly what Jesus speaks about. The Father has sent the Son!

Divided But One

The principle we are talking about is universal, applicable in all times and places. Let me, then, give you a second illustration — a different practice of the same principle.

I have been waiting for years for a time when two groups of born-again Christians, who for good reasons find it impossible to work together, separate without saying bitter things against each other. I have long longed for two groups who would continue to show a love to the watching world when they came to the place where organizational unity seemed no longer possible between them.

Theoretically, of course, every local church ought to be able to minister to the whole spectrum of society. But in practice we must acknowledge that in certain places it becomes very difficult. The needs of different segments of society are different.

Recently a problem of this nature arose in a church in a large city in the Midwest in the United States. A number of people attuned to the modern age were going to a certain church, but the pastor gradually concluded that he was not able to preach and minister to the two groups. Some men can, but he personally did not find it possible to minister to the whole spectrum of his congregation — the long-haired ones and the far-out people they brought, and, at the same time, the people of the surrounding neighborhood.

The example of observable love I am going to present now must not be taken as an “of course” situation in our day. In our generation the lack of love can easily cut both ways: A middle-class people can all too easily be snobbish and unloving against the long-haired Christians, and the long-haired Christians can be equally snobbish and unloving against the short-haired Christians.

After trying for a long time to work together, the elders met and decided that they would make two churches. They made it very plain that they were not dividing because their doctrine was different; they were dividing as a matter of practicability. One member of the old session went to the new group. They worked under the whole session to make an orderly transition. Now they have two churches and they are consciously practicing love toward each other.

Here is a lack of organizational unity that is a true love and unity which the world may observe. The Father has sent the Son!

I want to say with all my heart that as we struggle with the proper preaching of the gospel in the midst of the 20th century, the importance of observable love must come into our message. We must not forget the final apologetic. The world has a right to look upon us as we, as true Christians, come to practical differences and it should be able to observe that we do love each other. Our love must have a form that the world may observe; it must be seeable.

The One True Mark

Let us look again at the biblical texts which so clearly indicate the mark of the Christian:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:21)

What then shall we conclude but that as the Samaritan loved the wounded man, we as Christians are called upon to love all men as neighbors, loving them as ourselves. Second, that we are to love all true Christian brothers in a way that the world may observe. This means showing love to our brother in the midst of our differences — great or small — loving our brothers when it costs us something, loving them even under times of tremendous emotional tension, loving them in a way the world can see. In short, we are to practice and exhibit the holiness of God and the love of God, for without this we grieve the Holy Spirit.

Love — and the unity it attests to — is the mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father.

Solitude

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

 My friend, Seaton Garrett, has developed a great series called Spiritual Formation, Spiritual Disciplines.  Here is an excerpt from part 6 on Solitude:

Try an experiment sometime today, get alone for ten minutes and try to be still and quiet. Note how your body responds, where your mind wonders off to, what emotions or feelings you experience. See if it’s not true.

Most of the time I get three responses from people when we do this.

  1. Restlessness and a desire to get out of there asap. 75% (not addicted, huh?)
  2. They fall asleep. 5% (maybe a sign we’re out of balance?)
  3. Relief that they can stop running at warp speed. 20%

In solitude you are likely to encounter God, and yourself. Both can be pretty scary.

To read the whole post click: Solitude

Great series, Seaton.

 

The Mark of the Christian (part 4)

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

  by Francis Schaeffer

 

True Oneness

 

In John 13 and 17, Jesus talks about a real seeable oneness, a practicing oneness, a practical oneness across all lines, among all true Christians.

   

The Christian really has a double task. He has to practice both God’s holiness and God’s love. The Christian is to exhibit that God exists as the infinite-personal God; and then he is to exhibit simultaneously God’s character of holiness and love. Not his holiness without his love: that is only harshness. Not his love without his holiness: that is only compromise. Anything that an individual Christian or Christian group does that fails to show the simultaneous balance of the holiness of God and the love of God presents to a watching world not a demonstration of the God who exists but a caricature of the God who exists.

   

According to the Scripture and the teaching of Christ, the love that is shown is to be exceedingly strong. It is not just something you mention in words once in a while.

 

Visible Love

 

What, then, does this love mean? How can it be made visible?

   

First, it means a very simple thing: It means that when I have made a mistake and when I have failed to love my Christian brother, I go to him and say, “I’m sorry.” That is first.

   

It may seem a letdown – that the first thing we speak of should be so simple! But if you think it is easy, you have never tried to practice it.

   

In our own groups, in our own close Christian communities, even in our families, when we have shown lack of love toward another, we as Christians do not just automatically go and say we are sorry. On even the very simplest level it is never very easy.

   

It may sound simplistic to start with saying we are sorry and asking forgiveness, but it is not. This is the way of renewed fellowship, whether it is between a husband and wife, a parent and child, within a Christian community, or between groups. When we have shown a lack of love toward the other, we are called by God to go and say, “I’m sorry . . . I really am sorry.”

   

If I am not willing to say, “I’m sorry,” when I have wronged somebody else – especially when I have not loved him – I have not even started to think about the meaning of a Christian oneness which the world can see. The world has a right to question whether I am a Christian. And more than that, let me say it again, if I am not willing to do this very simple thing, the world has a right to question whether Jesus was sent from God and whether Christianity is true.

   

How well have we consciously practiced this? How often, in the power of the Holy Spirit, have we gone to Christians in our own group and said, “I’m sorry”? How much time have we spent reestablishing contact with those in other groups, saying to them, “I’m sorry for what I’ve done, what I’ve said, or what I’ve written”? How frequently has one group gone to another group with whom it differed and has said, “We’re sorry”? It is so important that it is, for all practical purposes, a part of the preaching of the gospel itself. The observable practice of truth and the observable practice of love go hand in hand with the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ.

   

I have observed one thing among true Christians in their differences in many countries: What divides and severs true Christian groups and Christians – what leaves a bitterness that can last for 20, 30 or 40 years (or for 50 or 60 years in a son’s memory) – is not the issue of doctrine or belief which caused the differences in the first place. Invariably it is lack of love – and the bitter things that are said by true Christians in the midst of differences. These stick in the mind like glue. And after time passes and the differences between the Christians or the groups appear less than they did, there are still those bitter, bitter things we said in the midst of what we thought was a good and sufficient objective discussion. It is these things – these unloving attitudes and words – that cause the stench that the world can smell in the church of Jesus Christ among those who are really true Christians.

   

If, when we feel we must disagree as true Christians, we could simply guard our tongues and speak in love, in five or ten years the bitterness could be gone. Instead of that, we leave scars – a curse for generations. Not just a curse in the church, but a curse in the world. Newspaper headlines bear it in our Christian press, and it boils over into the secular press at times – Christians saying such bitter things about other Christians.

   

The world looks, shrugs its shoulders and turns away. It has not seen even the beginning of a living church in the midst of a dying culture. It has not seen the beginning of what Jesus indicates is the final apologetic – observable oneness among true Christians who are truly brothers in Christ. Our sharp tongues, the lack of love between us – not the necessary statements of differences that may exist between true Christians – these are what properly trouble the world.

   

How different this is from the straightforward and direct command of Jesus Christ – to show an observable oneness which may be seen by a watching world!

 

Forgiveness

 

But there is more to observable love than saying we are sorry.  There must also be open forgiveness. And though it’s hard to say, “I’m sorry,” it’s even harder to forgive. The Bible, however, makes plain that the world must observe a forgiving spirit in the midst of God’s people.

   

In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus himself teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Now this prayer, we must say quickly, is not for salvation. It has nothing to do with being born again, for we are born again on the basis of the finished work of Christ plus nothing. But it does have to do with a Christian’s existential, moment-by-moment experiential relationship to God. We need a once-for-all forgiveness at justification, and we need a moment-by-moment forgiveness for our sins on the basis of Christ’s work in order to be in open fellowship with God. What the Lord has taught us to pray in the Lord’s prayer should make a Christian very sober every day of his life: We are asking the Lord to open to us the experiential realities of fellowship with himself as we forgive others.

   

Some Christians say that the Lord’s prayer is not for this present era, but most of us would say it is. And yet at the same time we hardly think once in a year about our lack of a forgiving heart in relationship to God’s forgiving us. Many Christians rarely or never seem to connect their own lack of reality of fellowship with God with their lack of forgiveness to men, even though they may say the Lord’s prayer in a formal way over and over in their weekly Sunday worship services.

   

We must all continually acknowledge that we do not practice the forgiving heart as we should. And yet the prayer is “Forgive us our debts, our trespasses, as we forgive our debtors.” We are to have a forgiving spirit even before the other person expresses regret for his wrong. The Lord’s prayer does not suggest that when the other man is sorry, then we are to show a oneness by having a forgiving spirit. Rather, we are called upon to have a forgiving spirit without the other man having made the first step. We may still say that he is wrong, but in the midst of saying that he is wrong, we must be forgiving.

   

We are to have this forgiving spirit not only toward Christians but toward all men. But surely if it is toward all men, it is important toward Christians.

   

Such a forgiving spirit registers an attitude of love toward others. But, even though one can call this an attitude, true forgiveness is observable. Believe me, you can look on a man’s face and know where he is as far as forgiveness is concerned. And the world is called on to look upon us and see whether we have love across the groups, love across party lines. Do they observe that we say, “I’m sorry,” and do they observe a forgiving heart? Let me repeat: Our love will not be perfect, but it must be substantial enough for the world to be able to observe or it does not fit into the structure of the verses in John 13 and 17. And if the world does not observe this among true Christians, the world has a right to make the two awful judgments which these verses indicate: That we are not Christians and that Christ was not sent by the Father.

 

Happy Belated Earth Day!

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

 

Earth Day 2008 just passed me by yesterday. The day came and went with barely my notice. And what little notice I did take came when I saw a blip on the news around 11pm.  The day was almost done in the East.

 

That’s a little disappointing because, quite honestly, a few months ago I had thought it might be a good idea to do a little research and post a short series about the Gospel and its relationship to Environmentalism.  That may seem a little odd if you are a conservative. But I honestly think many of conservative Evangelicals are missing something important.

 

1.  Psalm 24 does declare: “The earth is the Lord’s…”;  and Psalm 19 reminds us the God’s Creation declares his glory.  This suggests, to me, that appreciation and stewardship of our environment is a legitimate part of serving God. It may even be a legitimate resource for evangelism – but only if Christians reflect appropriate appreciation.  We need to, to borrow and paraphrase a title of a Tony Campolo book, Rescue Earth Without Worshipping Nature. (No, I have not read the book, but the title is cool.  I suspect, as with many of Campolo’s books, I would find many brilliant insights intermingled with a few, uh… unconventional assertions I cannot embrace.)

 

2. Environmental issues provide a forum in which we can dialogue with the world around us.  Certainly there will be a diversity of opinions, and some propositions which will never resonate with Evangelicals. But why are we largely absent from the conversation?  I think our failure to speak to this issue in our churches expresses to the world that we don’t really care about an issue that is close to many hearts; and it leaves the members of our churches with really only the non-theistic views of creation and environment to consider.

 

3.  While we battle in the courts and schools to reinstitute Creation Education, we hypocritaclly do virtually nothing with that creation that suggests we care.  It is not unlike the charge made against some Pro-Life activists, who passionately oppose abortion, but don’t appear to care enough for the unwanted and poor children who are born and live in horrendous situations.  (But that’s another subject… I only intended to point out that there is more behind the issues that Evangelicals do rally around, and that perhaps if we were as passionate and well rounded about these related matters we might find more receptive ears to our proclamations.)

 

I began to think about this issue several years ago, though I am still no expert. Living in East Tennessee, and before that Western Pennsylvania, it is easy to be awed by the natural beauty of the mountains, rivers, and wildlife. (Yes, for those of you who have never been there, Western PA/Pittsburgh, is beautiful outdoor country!) 

 

At that time I started reading some of the stuff put out by the Evangelical Environmental Network, because I could find nothing else on the subject claiming a distinct Christian world-view.  But I was a little disappointed with EEN because of some of the doctrinal views laced throughout their writings.  Then I became fully disenchanted with them when they launched the What Would Jesus Drive? campaign against SUV’s.  (Jay Leno had probably the best response to that question: “Let’s see. Jesus was a single guy, working as a carpenter, living in a small rural town in the middle of nowhere… What would he drive? Probably a large pickup.”)

 

But over the years I have found some solid thoughts from the Christian perspective.  Perhaps the best I’ve stumbled across is the Cornwall Declaration (.pdf) from the Cornwall Alliance.  This is a network of Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews who recognize that “The Earth is the Lord’s” and that we who live in it have a God-given responsibility to be the stewards of what has been entrusted to us. 

 

Let me end this post by inviting comments.  What are your thoughts about Evangelicals and Environmentalism?  And if you know of any good resources out there, please let me know.

 

 

The Advantages of Pleasing God Rather than Men

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments
 
The following dozen points are about the advantages to us in seeking to please God, instead of living for the approval of other people. They were originally written by the great English Puritan, Richard Baxter. 

I have attempted to clean up the language a little, hopefully without dulling the wisdom:

1. If you seek first to please God and are satisfied with that, you have but one to please instead of multitudes; and a multitude of masters are harder pleased than one.

2. And God is one who puts nothing upon you that is unreasonable, as far as quantity or quality.

3. And God is one who is perfectly wise and good, not liable to misunderstand your case and actions.

4. And God is one who is most holy, and is not pleased in iniquity or dishonesty.

5. And He is one that is impartial and most just, and is no respecter of persons. Acts 10:34

6. And He is one that is a competent judge, who is both fit and has authority, and is acquainted with your hearts, with your every circumstance and every reason behind your actions.

7. And He is one who perfectly agrees with himself, and does not subject you to contradictions or impossibilities.

8. And He is one who is constant and unchangeable; He is not pleased with one thing today and another contrary thing tomorrow; nor is He pleased with one person this year, whom he will be weary of the next.

9. And He is one who is merciful, and never requires you to hurt yourselves to please him: Nay, he is pleased with nothing from you except that which tends to your ultimate happiness; and displeased with nothing except that which hurts you or others, just as a father that is displeased with his children whenever they defile or hurt themselves.

10. He is gentle, though just, even when he disciplines you; judging accurately, but not harshly, nor making your actions out to be worse than they are.

11. He is one that is not subject to the irrational passions of men, which blind their minds, and carry them to injustice.

12. He is one who will not be moved by tale-bearers, whisperers, or false accusers, nor can be perverted by any misinformation.

The Mark of the Christian (part 3)

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

   by Francis Schaeffer

Honest Answers, Observable Love

 

Of course as Christians we must not minimize the need to give honest answers to honest questions. We should have an intellectual apologetic. The Bible commands it and Christ and Paul exemplify it. In the synagogue, in the marketplace, in homes and in almost every conceivable kind of situation, Jesus and Paul discussed Christianity. It is likewise the Christian’s task to be able to give an honest answer to an honest question and then to give it.

   

Yet, without true Christians loving one another, Christ says the world cannot be expected to listen, even when we give proper answers. Let us be careful, indeed, to spend a lifetime studying to give honest answers. For years the orthodox, evangelical church has done this very poorly. So it is well to spend time learning to answer the questions of men who are about us. But after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians.

   

While it is not the central consideration that I am dealing with at this time, yet the observable love and oneness among true Christians exhibited before the world must certainly cross all the lines which divide men. The New Testament says, “Neither Greek nor barbarian, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female.”

   

In the church at Antioch the Christians included Jews and Gentiles and reached all the way from Herod’s foster brother to the slaves; and the naturally proud Greek Christian Gentiles of Macedonia showed a practical concern for the material needs of the Christian Jews in Jerusalem. The observable and practical love among true Christians that the world has a right to be able to observe in our day certainly should cut without reservation across such lines as language, nationalities, national frontiers, younger and older, colors of skin, levels of education and economics, accent, line of birth, the class system in any particular locality, dress, short or long hair among whites and African and non-African hairdos among blacks, the wearing of shoes and the non-wearing of shoes, cultural differentiations and the more traditional and less traditional forms of worship.

   

If the world does not see this, it will not believe that Christ was sent by the Father. People will not believe only on the basis of the proper answers. The two should not be placed in antithesis. The world must have the proper answers to their honest questions, but at the same time, there must be a oneness in love between all true Christians. This is what is needed if men are to know that Jesus was sent by the Father and that Christianity is true.

 

False Notions of Unity

 

Let us be clear, however, about what this oneness is. We can start by eliminating some false notions. First, the oneness that Jesus is talking about is not just organizational oneness. In our generation we have a tremendous push for ecclesiastical oneness. It is in the air – like German measles in a time of epidemic – and it is all about us. Human beings can have all sorts of organizational unity but exhibit to the world no unity at all.

   

The classic example is the Roman Catholic Church down through the ages. The Roman Catholic Church has had a great external unity – probably the greatest outward organizational unity that has ever been seen in this world, but there have been at the same time titanic and hateful power struggles between different orders within the one church. Today there is still greater difference between the classical Roman Catholicism and progressive Roman Catholicism. The Roman Catholic Church still tries to stand in organizational oneness, but there is only organizational unity, for here are two completely different religions, two different concepts of God, two different concepts of truth.

   

And exactly the same thing is true in the Protestant ecumenical movement. There is an attempt to bring people together organizationally on the basis of Jesus’ statement, but there is no real unity, because two completely different religions – biblical Christianity and a “Christianity” which is no Christianity whatsoever – are involved. It is perfectly possible to have organizational unity, to spend a whole lifetime of energy on it, and yet to come nowhere near the realm that Jesus is talking about in John 17.

   

I do not wish to disparage proper organizational unity on a proper doctrinal basis. But Jesus is here talking about something very different, for there can be a great organizational unity without any oneness at all – even in churches that have fought for purity.

   

I believe very strongly in the principle and practice of the purity of the visible church, but I have seen churches that have fought for purity and are merely hotbeds of ugliness. No longer is there any observable, loving, personal relationship even in their own midst, let alone with other true Christians.

   

There is a further reason why one cannot interpret this unity of which Christ speaks as organizational. All Christians – “That they all may be one” – are to be one. It is obvious that there can be no organizational unity which could include all born-again Christians everywhere in the world. It is just not possible. For example, there are true, born-again Christians who belong to no organization at all. And what one organization could include those true Christians standing isolated from the outside world by persecution? Obviously organizational unity is not the answer.

   

There is a second false notion of what this unity involves. This is the view that evangelical Christians have often tried to escape under. Too often the evangelical has said, “Well, of course Jesus is talking here about the mystical union of the invisible church.” And then he lets it go at that and does not think about it any more – ever.

   

In theological terms there are, to be sure, a visible church and an invisible church. The invisible Church is the real Church — in a way, the only church that has a right to be spelled with a capital. Because it is made up of all those who have thrown themselves upon Christ as Savior, it is most important. It is Christ’s Church. As soon as I become a Christian, as soon as I throw myself upon Christ, I become a member of this Church, and there is a mystical unity binding me to all other members. True. But this is not what Jesus is talking about in John 13 and John 17, for we cannot break up this unity no matter what we do. Thus, to relate Christ’s words to the mystical unity of the invisible Church is to reduce Christ’s words to a meaningless phrase.

   

Third, he is not talking about our positional unity in Christ. It is true that there is a positional unity in Christ — that as soon as we accept Christ as Savior we have one Lord, one baptism, one birth (the second birth), and we are clothed with Christ’s righteousness. But that is not the point here.

   

Fourth, we have legal unity in Christ, but he is not talking about that. There is a beautiful and wonderful legal unity among all Christians. The Father (the judge of the universe) forensically declares, on the basis of the finished work of Christ in space, time and history, that the true moral guilt of those who cast themselves upon Christ is gone. In that fact we have a wonderful unity; but that is not what Jesus is talking about here.

   

It will not do for the evangelical to try to escape into the concept of the invisible Church and these other related unities. To relate these verses in John 13 and 17 merely to the existence of the invisible Church makes Jesus’ statement a nonsense statement. We make a mockery of what Jesus is saying unless we understand that he is talking about something visible.

   

This is the whole point: The world is going to judge whether Jesus has been sent by the Father on the basis of something that is open to observation.

 

 

The Mark of the Christian (part 1)

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

  by Francis Schaeffer

 

 

Through the centuries men have displayed many different symbols to show that they are Christians. They have worn marks in the lapels of their coats, hung chains about their necks, even had special haircuts.

   

Of course, there is nothing wrong with any of this, if one feels it is his calling. But there is a much better sign – a mark that has not been thought up just as a matter of expediency for use on some special occasion or in some specific era. It is a universal mark that is to last through all the ages of the church till Jesus comes back.

   

What is this mark?

   

At the close of his ministry, Jesus looks forward to his death on the cross, the open tomb and the ascension. Knowing that he is about to leave, Jesus prepares his disciples for what is to come. It is here that he makes clear what will be the distinguishing mark of the Christian:

 

My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:33-35)

 

This passage reveals the mark that Jesus gives to label a Christian not just in one era or in one locality but at all times and all places until Jesus returns.

   

Notice that what he says here is not a description of a fact. It is a command which includes a condition: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” An if is involved. If you obey, you will wear the badge Christ gave. But since this is a command, it can be violated.

   

The point is that it is possible to be a Christian without showing the mark, but if we expect non-Christians to know that we are Christians, we must show the mark.

 

Men and Brothers

 

The command at this point is to love our fellow Christians, our brothers. But, of course, we must strike a balance and not forget the other side of Jesus’ teaching: We are to love our fellowmen, to love all men, in fact, as neighbors.

   

All men bear the image of God. They have value, not because they are redeemed, but because they are God’s creation in God’s image. Modern man, who has rejected this, has no clue as to who he is, and because of this he can find no real value for himself or for other men. Hence, he downgrades the value of other men and produces the horrible thing we face today – a sick culture in which men treat men as inhuman, as machines. As Christians, however, we know the value of men.

   

All men are our neighbors, and we are to love them as ourselves. We are to do this on the basis of creation, even if they are not redeemed, for all men have value because they are made in the image of God. Therefore they are to be loved even at great cost.

   

This is, of course, the whole point of Jesus’ story of the good Samaritan: Because a man is a man, he is to be loved at all cost.

   

So, when Jesus gives the special command to love our Christian brothers, it does not negate the other command. The two are not antithetical. We are not to choose between loving all men as ourselves and loving the Christian in a special way. The two commands reinforce each other.

   

If Jesus has commanded so strongly that we love all men as our neighbors, then how important it is especially to love our fellow Christians. If we are told to love all men as our neighbors – as ourselves – then surely, when it comes to those with whom we have the special bonds as fellow Christians – having one Father through one Jesus Christ and being indwelt by one Spirit – we can understand how overwhelmingly important it is that all men be able to see an observable love for those with whom we have these special ties. Paul makes the double obligation clear in Galatians 6:10: “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” He does not negate the command to do good to all men. But it is still not meaningless to add, “especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” This dual goal should be our Christian mentality, the set of our minds; we should be consciously thinking about it and what it means in our one-moment-at-a-time lives. It should be the attitude that governs our outward observable actions.

   

Very often the true Bible-believing Christian, in his emphasis on two humanities – one lost, one saved – one still standing in rebellion against God, the other having returned to God through Christ – has given a picture of exclusiveness which is ugly.

   

There are two humanities. That is true. Some men made in the image of God still stand in rebellion against him; some, by the grace of God, have cast themselves upon God’s solution.

   

Nonetheless, there is in another very important sense only one humanity. All men derive from one origin. By creation all men bear the image of God. In this sense all men are of one flesh, one blood.

   

Hence, the exclusiveness of the two humanities is undergirded by the unity of all men. And Christians are not to love their believing brothers to the exclusion of their non-believing fellowmen. That is ugly. We are to have the example of the good Samaritan consciously in mind at all times.

 

A Delicate Balance

 

The first commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind. The second commandment bears the universal command to love men. Notice that the second commandment is not just to love Christians. It is far wider than this. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

   

1 Thessalonians 3:12 carries the same double emphasis: “And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you.” Here the order is reversed. First of all, we are to have love one toward another and then toward all men, but that does not change the double emphasis. Rather, it points up the delicate balance – a balance that is not in practice automatically maintained.

   

In 1 John 3:11 (written later than the gospel that bears his name) John says, “For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” Years after Christ’s death, John, in writing the epistle, calls us back to Christ’s original command in John 13. Speaking to the church, John in effect says, “Don’t forget this . . . Don’t forget this. This command was given to us by Christ while he was still on the earth. This is to be your mark.”

 

Are You Tired of Trying to Measure Up?

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

measure-up.jpg

Do you ever feel like you have to measure up?  Do you wonder sometimes how  you are grading out in God’s eyes?  I suspect that the answer for most people is “Yes”.    Our theologies may tell us otherwise, but I think most people struggle with this from time to time – especially when we feel emotionally tired and as if we are coasting in neutral gear spiritually.   

I’m not sure many people are even aware that we feel this way. We know our theology well enough, and so we remind ourselves of the truth of the Gospel: That we are declared righteous in Christ.  This is a wonderful truth.  But sometimes we don’t really live in the light of this truth.  This is the difference between our confessional theology and our functional theology.   

In other words there is sometimes (often?) a gap between what we know to be the facts and the way we allow those facts to impact our heart and emotions.  Put mathmatically, the difference between our confessional theology and our functional theology equals frustration.  (F – C = Frus)

A few months ago I posted an excellent article by Paula Rinehart, that had originally been written for The Navigators’ Discipleship Journal.  Because I know the tendency we have toward wandering onto what Jerry Bridges calls a Performance Treadmill, I wanted to post it again.   

If you ever find yourself tired of trying to measure up, or know others around you who seem to fall into that trap, you will appreciate: 

Good Enough!

Cat & Dog Theology

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments
It seems to be going great.

Our church is in the middle of hosting the Cat & Dog Theology seminar as part of our missions conference. And despite those reservations that would usually be expected when a conservative church hosts a seminar with such a preposterous sounding theme, those in attendance seem to be benefiting from the teaching and experience.

To be honest, this is what I expected when we scheduled the conference. I’ve been familiar with this seminar, and the host agency, UnveilinGLORY, for some time. We hosted this same seminar in the previous church I served, and we used the material that pre-dated Cat & Dog Theology in the church I served before that.

The seminar title catches your attention, but most people are not quite sure what to expect. It’s easy to assume that even if the teaching is kosher, how much depth could there possibly be? But you’d be surprised.

Cat & Dog Theology is based on an old joke about the differences between cats and dogs. It is said that while dogs have masters, cats have staff. And the sad truth is that too many Christians live in relationship to God more like cats who assume God exists simply to provide for us, with little regard for His Glory, His Purpose, and His Mission, except as it benefits us. Dogs, on the other hand, delight to be in their master’s presence. And in that sense we ought to be far more dogged.

What has any of this to do with World Evangelization? That’s a common question, once people understand the basis of the conference, and overcome initial apprehensions and skepticisms.

The fundamental motive and goal of Christian mission should be God-centered: it is for the purpose of declaring His glory among all Nations. While the result of effective mission will be the salvation of peoples from every tribe, tongue, and Nation, the ultimate goal (and result) is the gathering of heartfelt worshippers of the One True God from among all the Peoples of the Earth.

Cat & Dog Theology, by helping unveil the Glory of God, the mission of God (Missio Dei) revealed consistently from Genesis to Revelation, and the call to all Christians to be participants in this mission, not only moves us out into the world, but it reminds us of the ultimate reason we go.

The conference continues and concludes tonight.

If you are in the area I invite you to join us. For readers of this blog who are not part of Walnut Hill Church, I highly recommend hosting the Cat & Dog Theology seminar in your church. It will make a world of difference, as you consider how you can – and why you should – make a difference in the world.

For those of you from Walnut Hill, I invite you to comment on what you learned and what you thought. It should make for some enlightening discussions.

Signs of Living to Please God

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

In Galatians 1:10, the Apostle Paul asks a semi-rhetorical question: “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God?”   

 At this time of the year most of us see the opportunity for a new start. Whether you are one who makes New Year’s Resolutions or not, there seems to be a sense of a“Do Over” that comes almost as soon as that ball drops in Times Square, and the Bowl season begins to make way for the roundball & puck.   

The Apostle’s question raises another, more fundamental question: Who is it that we are to live to please?  

I want that to be a question that will be given consideration for this new year (… and every year).  

It would not be appropriate to suppose Paul suggests affirmation from the people around us is a bad thing. On many occasions Paul expressed his thankfulness for having been well received, for the friendships he enjoyed with many among whom he had lived and labored.  Yet his question should remind us: “The primary purpose of man is to glorify and enjoy God”. (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 1)

While earning esteem at work, in your neighborhood, or among family members may often be a good thing, Paul reminds us that it is when this is our driving motivation that we may be out of accord with the very purpose for which we are created, and for which we are redeemed.   

So how do we know when we are falling into this? (Yes, when, not if.)   

The great English Puritan, Richard Baxter, provides us with some thoughts, and exhorts us: “See therefore that you live for God’s approval as that which you chiefly seek, and as that will suffice you.”

You may discover yourself by these signs: 

  1. You will be careful to understand the Scripture, to know what pleases and displeases God
  2. You will be more careful in the doing of every task, to fit it to the pleasure of God rather than men.
  3. You will look to your hearts, and not only to your actions; to your goals, and thoughts, and the inward manner and degree.
  4. You will look to secret duties as well as public, and to that which men do not see as well as those which they see.
  5. You will revere your conscience, paying close attention to it, and not slighting it; when it tells you of God’s displeasure, it will disquiet you; when it tells you of His approval, it will comfort you.
  6. Your pleasing men will be charitable for their good, and pious (holy) in order to please God, not proud and ambitious for your honor among men, nor impious against the pleasing of God.

Baxter Goes on to say:

Whether men are pleased or displeased, how they judge you or what they call you, will seem a small matter to you, as their own interests, in comparison to God’s judgment. You don’t live for them. You can bear their displeasure, and comments, if God is pleased. 

The Beauty of Human Relationships

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

by Frances Schaeffer

This is the fourth of four posts in a series titled Two Contents, Two Realities.  These posts are slightly edited excerpts of a paper delivered by Dr. Francis Schaeffer  as part of the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland.

*********

The second reality is the beauty of human relationships. True Christianity produces beauty as well as’ truth, especially in the specific areas of human relationships. Read the New Testament carefully with this in mind; notice how often Jesus returns us to this theme, how often Paul speaks of it. We are to show something to the watching world on the basis of the human relationships we have with other people, not just other Christians.

Christians today are the people who understand who man is. Modern man is in a dilemma because he does not know that man is qualitatively different from non-man. We say man is different because he is made in the image of God. But we must not say man is made in the image of God unless we look to God and by God’s grace treat every man with dignity. We stand against B. F. Skinner in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity. But I dare not argue against Skinner’s determinism if I then treat the men I meet day by day as less than really made in the image of God.

I am talking first of all about non-Christians. The first commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind, and the second is to love our neighbor as ourselves. After Jesus commanded this, someone said, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus then told the story of the good Samaritan. He was not just talking about treating Christians well; he was talking about treating every man we meet well, every man whether he is in our social stratum or not, every man whether he speaks our language or not, every man whether he has the color of our skin or not. Every man is to be treated on the level of truly being made in the image of God, and thus there is to be a beauty of human relationships.

This attitude is to operate on all levels. I meet a man in a revolving door. How much time do I have with him? Maybe ten seconds. I am to treat him well. We look at him. We do not think consciously in every case that this man is made in the image of God, but, having ground into our bones and into our consciousness (as well as our doctrinal statement) that he is made in the image of God, we will treat him well in those ten seconds which we have.

We approach a red light. We have the same problem. Perhaps we will never see these other people at the intersection again, but we are to remember that they have dignity.

And when we come to the longer relationships–for example, the employer-employee relationship–we are to treat each person with dignity. The husband-and-wife relationship, the parent-and child relationship, the political relationship, the economic relationship 3 -in every single relationship of life, to the extent to which I am in contact with a man or woman, sometimes shorter and sometimes longer, he or she is to be treated in such a way that – man or woman – if he is thinking at all, he will say, “Didn’t he treat me well!”What about the liberal theologian? Yes, we are to stand against his theology. We are to practice truth, and we are not to compromise. We are to stand in antithesis to his theology. But even though we cannot cooperate with him in religious things, we are to treat the liberal theologian in such a way that we try from our side to bring our discussion into the circle of truly human relationships. Can we do these two things together in our own strength? No, but in the strength of the power of the Holy Spirit, it can be done. We can have the beauty of human relationships even when we must say no.

Now, if we are called upon to love our neighbor as ourselves when he is not a Christian, how much more – ten thousand times ten thousand times more – should there be beauty in the relationships between true Bible-believing Christians, something so beautiful that the world would be brought up short! We must hold our distinctives. Some of us are Baptists; some of us hold to infant baptism; some of us are Lutheran, and so on. But to true Bible believing Christians across all the lines, in all the camps, I emphasize: if we do not show beauty in the way we treat each other, then in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of our own children, we are destroying the truth we proclaim.

Every big company, if it is going to build a huge plant, first makes a pilot plant in order to show that their plan will work. Every church, every mission, every Christian school, every Christian group, regardless of what sphere it is in, should be a pilot plant that the world can look at and see there a beauty of human relationships which stands in exact contrast to the awful ugliness of what modern men paint in their art, what they make with their sculpture, what they show in their cinema, and how they treat each other. Men should see in the church a bold alternative to the way modern men treat people as animals and machines. There should be something so different that they will listen, something so different it will commend the gospel to them.

Every group ought to be like that, and our relationships between our groups ought to be like that. Have they been? The answer all too often is no. We have something to ask the Lord to forgive us for. Evangelicals, we who are true Bible-believing Christians, must ask God to forgive us for the ugliness with which we have often treated each other when we are in different camps.

I am talking now about beauty, and I have chosen this word with care. I could call it love, but we have so demoted the word that it is often meaningless. So I use the word beauty. There should be beauty, observable beauty, for the world to see in the way all true Christians treat each other.

We need two orthodoxies: first, an orthodoxy of doctrine and, second, an orthodoxy of community. Why was the early church able, within one century, to spread from the Indus River to Spain? Think of that: one century, India to Spain. When we read in Acts and in the epistles, we find a church that had and practiced both orthodoxies (doctrine and community), and this could be observed by the world. Thus, they commended the gospel to the world of that day and the Holy Spirit was not grieved.

There is a tradition (it is not in the Bible) that the world said about the Christians in the early church, “Behold, how they love each other.” As we read Acts and the epistles, we realize that these early Christians were really struggling for a practicing community. We realize that one of the marks of the early church was a real community, a community that reached down all the way to their care for each other in their material needs.

Have we exhibited this community in our evangelical churches? I have to say no – by and large, no. Our churches have often been two things – preaching points and activity generators. When a person really has desperate needs in the area of race, or economic matters, or psychological matters, does he naturally expect to find a supporting community in our evangelical churches? We must say with tears, many times no!

My favorite church in Acts and, I guess, in all of history is the church at Antioch. I love the church at Antioch. I commend to you to read again about it. It was a place where something new happened: the great, proud Jews who despised the Gentiles (there was an anti-Gentilism among the Jews, just as so often, unhappily, there has been anti-Semitism among Gentiles) came to a breakthrough. They could not be silent. They told their Gentile neighbors about the gospel, and suddenly, on the basis of the blood of Christ and the truth of the Word of God, the racial thing was solved. There were Jewish Christians and there were Gentile Christians, and they were one!

More than that, there was a total span of the social spectrum. We are not told specifically that there were slaves in the church of Antioch, but we know there were in other places and there is no reason to think they were not in Antioch. We know by the record in Acts that there was no less a person in that church than Herod’s foster brother. The man at the very peak of the social pyramid and the man at the bottom of the pile met together in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they were one in a beauty of human relationships.

And I love it for another reason. There was a man called Niger in that church, and that means black. More than likely, he was a black man. The church at Antioch on the basis of the blood of Christ encompassed the whole. There was a beauty that the Greek and the Roman world did not know–and the world looked. And then there was the preaching of the gospel. In one generation the church spread from the Indus River to Spain. If we want to touch our generation, we must be no less than this.

I would emphasize again that community reached all the way down into the realm of material possessions. There is no communism, as we today know the word communism,  in the book of Acts. Peter made very plain to Ananias and Sapphira that their land was their own, and when they had sold their land they were masters of what they did with the money. No state or church law, no legalism, bound them. What existed in the early church was a love that was so overwhelming that they could not imagine in the church of the Lord Jesus having one man hungry and one man rich. When the Corinthian church fell into this, Paul was scathing in 1 Corinthians in writing against it.

Note, too, that deacons were appointed. Why? Because the church had found difficulty in caring for one another’s material needs. Read James 2. James asks, “What are you doing preaching the gospel to a man and trying to have a good relationship with him spiritually if he needs shoes and you do not give him shoes?” Here is another place where the awful Platonic element in the evangelical church has been so dominant and so deadly. It has been considered spiritual to give for missions, but not equally spiritual to give when my brother needs shoes. That is never found in the Word of God. Of course, the early church gave to missions; at times they gave money so Paul did not have to make tents. But Paul makes no distinction between collections for missions and collections for material needs, as if one were spiritual and the other not. For the most part when Paul spoke of financial matters, he did so because there was a group of Christians somewhere who had a material need, and Paul then called upon other churches to help.

Moreover, it was not only in the local church that the Christians cared for each other’s needs; they did so at great distances.  The church of Macedonia, which was made up of Gentile Christians, when they heard that the Jewish Christians, the Jews whom they would previously have despised, had material need, took an offering and sent it with care hundreds of miles in order that the Jewish Christians might eat.

So, there must be two orthodoxies: the orthodoxy of doctrine and the orthodoxy of community. And both orthodoxies must be practiced down into the warp and the woof of life where the Lordship of the Lord Jesus touches every area of our life.

Good Enough!

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Are You Tired of Trying to Measure Up? Paula Rinehart wrote the article below for Discipleship Journal.

***

One fall evening, after months of recurring chest pain   and a rather hectic schedule, I found myself  thinking out loud with my husband as we watched the sun sink lower and lower in the Colorado sky.

We had been discussing the various pressures that clogged our lives–mostly good things, but too many and too much. It seemed the more we did, the more we had yet to do. I never felt I could get to the end of all the “doing.” Where was the off-button? What kept me pushing so hard, so long?

Finally, I posed a question I didn’t even know I was asking until it popped out. “Why do you suppose,” I asked my husband, Stacy, “that God makes it so hard to serve Him?”

That question was like a peek behind a wall for me. It plagued me for months, dogging my steps with the tenacity of an old hound. It hinted of a God who could not be pleased. After years of trafficking in the great truths of God, might there be a large gap between what I knew about Him, and what I personally believed, I wondered? Could the image I held of God be vastly different from who, in truth, He is?

Stuck on the Treadmill

My chest pain hinted that I should look further, especially after a battery of medical tests failed to reveal a physical reason for the pain. I decided to accept it as a talisman to help me see what I really believed, on an emotional level, about following Christ.

What I discovered in that quest was the utter shallowness of my understanding of grace.

As I read the Bible, I would ask myself what I knew in my mind to be true . . . and what I actually believed. The discrepancy, in many cases, was unnerving. I came upon old, familiar passages, one in particular that I had memorized as a young Christian.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.-Mt. 11:28-30

Here were wonderful words of Jesus about rest and a lightened load, but I had never been able to apply them to myself. They spoke of something so contrary to my experience that I had, in effect, deleted them from the text.

I slowly began to realize that I had been reading Scripture for years through the lens of personal effort and discipline, as though the great weight of following Christ rested squarely on my shoulders. And the crazy, destructive part of living out of personal effort and zeal is that you can never know when you’ve done enough. You are stuck on a treadmill with the off-button forever out of reach.

I had lived by “the tyranny of the oughts.” You ought to do more. You ought to do better. There might be 30 things wrong with you, but with God’s help, the list could be narrowed to 20 or with extra effort, even 10. Someday, you might even be “fixed.” Then you could relax . . . once you were a little closer to the ideal. Until then, like the Eveready Bunny, you just keep going and going and going. No wonder I felt tired all the time!

I began to see that while the grace of God had been the booster rocket that launched me into the faith, I knew more about explaining the message than the actual experience of living under grace. God’s grace had become just a familiar part of the backdrop to the real business–and busyness–of life. It did not describe an address where I actually lived.

As I went through this period where I felt I could never do enough, I became aware of a rather harsh, inner critic, a “voice” that provided a walking commentary on my life.

Hadn’t I had a pretty good devotional time this morning? “Well yes, Paula, but you know you aren’t doing much serious Bible study these days.”

Reading was a struggle for our son despite everyone’s efforts. “And you know, Paula, that a really good mother would tackle this problem with home schooling.”

A close friend was going through a rough time in her marriage. “But you let her walk out of your door yesterday with a rather weak word of comfort.”

In whatever direction I looked, I felt I was not measuring up. And the faint but relentless little voice inside rarely failed to point out that fact.

Turning Points

A major turning point in my quest to live under God’s grace came when I finally realized that my “inner critic” was not the voice of God. I was hearing an echo of myself and my longing to be loved and affirmed. Maybe I could finally do enough to feel loved. And doing enough to merit God’s approval would be, of course, the ultimate silencer of any thoughts of unworthiness. The emotional logic behind a lifestyle of personal effort is that someday, if I work hard enough, I will be received with open arms and a big smile.

One of God’s best gifts to me was chest pain and fatigue. They forced me to face the empty, scary vacuum that opens up when you are stopped in your tracks. And what I stumbled upon was an experiential understanding of God’s grace, one that comes when you are too empty-handed to do anything but humbly receive.

I came to realize that for years I had been relating to God as more of a “hired hand” than a daughter. David Seamands was the first to make this distinction, and it’s an important one. A hired hand is always in a rather tentative position. She may, by hard work and faithfulness, be promoted to a higher position–or she may be dismissed summarily and replaced by another. There’s no security, and hence, no rest.

But the relationship that God has invited us into is different altogether. By His grace, we are counted as His children. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” the Apostle John said (1 John. 3:1). My relationship, then, is that of a daughter. A daughter may grieve her Father, she may encounter His discipline–but she has the basic confidence of belonging and being loved. A daughter can work and serve and give–and a daughter can play and rest and receive. There is a world of difference between living as a hired hand (as though God had some “need” of our services) and living as a daughter or a son.

An Emotional Home

I began to see that the frustrated feeling that I might never “get there,” a feeling I carried beneath my chest pain, was accurate. No amount of “doing well and doing enough” would bring the sense of peace and acceptance I longed for. Rather, grace begins in a different place altogether. It grows out of believing that I am already there, already declared His daughter, pronounced His. He has been there waiting for the prodigal to return from the fields of her own self-effort, ready to speak the words He said to the elder son, “I have always loved you and all that I have is yours.”

Grace is our emotional home, the new place on the far side of the cross from which we begin, the very air we are meant to breathe. It can never be earned–only claimed. As Paul said, “Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Ro. 5:1-2). Grace describes the ontological reality of our existence: We are already loved, already accepted, already made secure by the blood of Christ.

Living under grace is best described in terms of being, rather than doing. In fact, grace is the being that makes all the real doing possible. What does it mean to live from a place that the Scripture calls “this grace in which we stand”? The experience of grace is about living from a place where we know we are really loved. That may sound simple enough, but the truth is that any time we encounter the experience of being loved by God, it comes with an element of surprise.

A Welcome for the Unworthy

We are conditioned from childhood on to expect to encounter acceptance and love when we have been good boys and girls. That is the way life works. If we perform well, then we have a chance at winning the prize. Our talents, our strengths, our good attitudes provide our best hope of ever feeling wanted and valued. But the strangest thing happens in the gospel. If we read the text right, we realize that God looks at our “best” and claims that He is not terribly impressed. Yet He reaches past that, into the unseemly, weak, broken–and even sinful–aspects of who we are and loves us as we have never been loved before.

Frederick Buechner writes of a rather ordinary moment in his life when this kind of reality stung him. He was receiving communion one morning in a small village church where he knew the local priest well. As the priest moved nearer, Buechner could hear him intoning the familiar words, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” Over and over he repeated the phrase.

But when the priest came to him, on an impulse he inserted another word. “The body of Christ, Freddy, the bread of heaven.” It was not unusual that the priest knew his name. But the effect on Buechner was extraordinary – it caught him off guard. He says,

For the first time in my life, maybe, it struck me that when Jesus picked up the bread at His last meal and said, “This is my body which is for you,” He was doing it not just in a ritual way . . . but in an unthinkably personal way for every particular man or woman or child who ever existed or someday would exist. Most unthinkable of all: maybe He was doing it for me.

The truth of the cross, the truth about grace, Buechner writes, is that “we are welcomed not as the solid citizens that our Sunday best suggests we are, but in all our tackiness and tatteredness that nobody in the world knows better than each of us knows about ourselves–the bitterness and the phoniness and the confusion and the irritability and the prurience and the half-heartedness. The bread of heaven, Freddy, of all people.”

Grace invites us to return, over and over and over, to the surprising reality of being loved in the midst of failure, weakness, and sin–in all the unworthy places of our lives where we would least expect ever to encounter such a response.

Grace and Obedience

The experience of grace is about letting our obedience grow out of our relationship with God.

David Seamands tells the story of a woman he helped, a woman who had known many disappointments in her bruised background. She was faced with a terribly attractive temptation. Amazingly, she was able to resist. Seamands asked her how she summoned the strength to turn away from an offer that symbolized so much of what she’d missed in her life.

“I’ve thought long and hard about it,” she said, “but it would be a real departure from Christ, and I just cannot bring myself to turn my back on that kind of love.”

I often ponder her response. The “ought-to’s” and the “have-to’s” and the “shoulds” were not what she was relying on to force her to make the right choice. Rather, she let the relationship she enjoyed with the Lord be what drew her to obedience. She could not turn her back on that kind of love, she said. What God asked of her was not viewed as a burden. It was the evidence of His care and protection, the proof of His unfailing pursuit of her.

Paul makes this point in his letter to the Romans. He says it is the kindness of God that is meant to lead us to repentance–not His severity, not the harshness of the judgment we deserve (Ro. 2:4). His kindness in the face of our sin is meant to melt the stubbornness in our hearts. We are responding to Someone who loves us and went to incredible lengths to demonstrate that love.

Grace and Rest

The experience of grace is also about letting ourselves relax in His embrace. There is something about experiencing grace that brings to mind the image of a weaned and satisfied child. For grace requires a willingness just to be with God in a way that we can receive, rather than perform. In his book Silence on Fire, William Shannon suggests that we often make the mistake of feeling we must do something in order to gain some entrance with the Lord, some hearing. He says, rather, that we need only pray to be made aware that we are already there, already at home with Him. His grace has brought Him near.

Sometimes when I pray and I am having a hard time settling into a sense of being with the Lord, a picture flashes before my eyes. I see myself standing behind a large bush, straightening my skirt and trying rather frantically to untangle something in my hand. I think it is my life I am trying to untangle! The idea is that if I could just get a little more presentable on the inside, then it might actually be possible to enter His presence.

That mental picture has helped me immensely because I realize more and more that grace is not like that. Grace means I can come out from behind the bush and be received by Him, once again, as the old hymn says, “just as I am.” My prayer is that I can become aware that I am already with Him, in this present moment. That is the practical reality of being received by grace. I am invited to experience the pleasure of a relationship that has been redeemed.

A few years ago a woman addicted to cocaine taught me something about what it means to let God love you this way. She was my client in a counseling internship, and one day she was terribly upset. Her roommate had tried to commit suicide, and Rachel had found her, barely alive. Rachel was unable to get the image of her friend out of her mind, an image that painfully reminded her of her brother’s death a few years before.

As I sat alone in a room with her, I felt at a loss for words. Indeed, there were no words to be said. What could I offer a woman who had experienced years of trauma, of which this last was a reminder of all the rest? Yet her tears were bordering hysteria. Finally, I made a move unusual at a county agency. I said, almost out of desperation, “Rachel, would you like for me to pray for you?”

“Oh, would you please,” she replied, to my surprise. “I would be so grateful to have someone pray for me.”

The prayer I prayed was very simple. I have no memory of the words I said, but I realized that the woman before me was becoming calm again–incredibly calm–almost childlike. When we finished praying, we began to talk once more. I asked her, “Rachel, you changed so visibly in the midst of praying, I wonder what you saw in your mind as we prayed?”

“I saw God on His throne,” she replied, matter of factly. “I saw God on His throne and He invited me to sit in His lap, and He said, ‘There now, Rachel, it will be okay. You will be all right.’”

I was speechless at the way that God met this woman. It struck a deep, deep chord in my life. I think each of us longs, at the very core of our being, for this kind of reassurance from God, for the sense that we are welcomed into His presence in a way that soothes the most tattered edges of our soul. It is His grace that invites us, always invites us. There in the silence and the solitude He waits to give the grace we need.

Dare to Be Free

I discovered in my journey that the compulsive pace of my life mirrored the true beliefs of my heart, however erroneous. Whatever I said I knew was true about God, what I really believed was that my effort could wrest from Him a love and acceptance based on my performance. I could not receive grace–the marvelous, utterly surprising grace of God–until I stepped off the treadmill and waited with empty, needy hands. I could not hear His voice–strong, inviting, and steady–until I could separate Him from the nagging critic I carried inside me. Until I disconnected my longing to be loved from my efforts to please.

I know a little more now, with my heart as well as my head, of what the Apostle John meant when he said at the end of his life, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (Rev. 1:5). John was the man who dared to describe himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved.

I think John was writing about grace–the grace in which we stand.

Some Thoughts About Spiritual Formation

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Eugene Peterson, in his recent book, The Jesus Way, writes:   

“Following Jesus necessarily means getting his ways and means into our everyday lives. It is not enough simply to recognize and approve his ways and get started in the right direction. Jesus’ ways are meant to be embraced and assimilated into our habits. This takes place only as we pray our following of him. It cannot be imposed from without, cannot be copied. It must be shaped from within. This shaping takes place in prayer. The practice of prayer is the primary way that Jesus’ way comes to permeate our entire lives so that we walk spontaneously and speak rhythmically in the fluidity and fluency of holiness.”  

My good friend, Seaton Garrett, of Are We There Yet? , has offered some thoughtful reflections about Spiritual Formation, inspired by Peterson’s work, in a post: Ways & Means, The Jesus Way. 

Check it out.

Desiring God

/ Dennis Griffith / 5 Comments

If you are not already familiar with his work, I want to introduce you to John Piper. In particular I commend his book Desiring God. Desiring God

This book is a modern day classic. And in my mind it an almost indespensible aid to  gaining a Biblical perspective of the Glory of God.  Well, indespensible might be a bit of an overstatement.  But, it is a book I have read and re-read many, many times, always coming away with new insights and delight.

When I first read Desiring God it resonated with me like few other books ever have. I don’t want to say it shaped my thinking at that time. Rather I think it confirmed it.  I always knew there had to be away of enjoying life and honoring God.  Piper opens the door to show us how!

Piper thoroughly saturates his writing with exposition of Scripture, and brings together two aspects of life that are sadly not often enough paired together: Our Joy and God’s Glory.  By reuniting these perspectives Piper expresses far better than I could even dream of doing what what it means to live according to our primary purpose as Christians.  And because he expressed it so well, he has subsequently shaped much of how I express this important aspect of the Gospel. 

The link I provided above is to the e-book – the entire book online.  But there are also a number of other outstanding resources available at Desiring God Ministries.

I suggest reading through and thinking about at least the Introduction: How I Became a Christian Hedonist. (I know that whole concept may be shocking at first, but it will make perfect sense once you read the Intro.)  Then look over the chapter titles.

If you are hungry to grow in both your relationship with God and how a Christian lives, you won’t be disappointed.